On libraries, services and networks.

September 2005 has 27 entries

Changing expectationsSeptember 28, 2005Four years in the US, and the lease was up on our car. Now that we have a credit history, and the junk mail to prove it, replacing it proved easier than first time round. This afternoon, I played my first CD in the car. Appropriately for the times, it...read full entry...

WikibooksSeptember 28, 2005I had not come across Wikibooks before, which is a collection of textbook 'modules' created in the Wikipedia model. Wikibooks is one of the Wikimedia family. Naturally enough, coverage is still intermittent. I do not know what sort of momentum it has picked up. There is a skeleton - if...read full entry...

A linguistic digressionSeptember 26, 2005Our daughter came home one day shortly after starting school in England asking what the 'pavement' was. She was used to hearing her Irish parents call it the 'path'. When she came to the US, she discovered that it was the 'sidewalk'. The variety of English that is spoken in...read full entry...

Web 2.0September 26, 2005 Tim O'Reilly presents a Web 2.0 'MemeMap', the result of some brainstorming at a recent event. This places some familiar concepts (services, not packaged software; remixable data source and data transformations; data as the 'Intel inside') in useful frame. My eye was drawn to 'harnessing collective intelligence', as it...read full entry...

Painting a moving trainSeptember 26, 2005Blogged conference reports can be somewhat telegraphese - but are often interesting to scan. Here are a couple - followed by an observation. Richard Akerman blogs the Info-grid conference over several entries beginning here. A while ago, Overdue Ideas reported on Ex-Libris user meetings extensively. See the message here and...read full entry...

Missing you in CopenhagenSeptember 23, 2005I should be getting ready to fly to Copenhagen where I was scheduled to speak at the Building the Info Grid conference. I very much regret that I cannot travel as I recuperate from surgery and will miss the conference. I have agreed to participate in a followup event to...read full entry...

Looking at the siteSeptember 23, 2005I find web-site appearance both more and less important. Less important because I look at a lot of things through RSS. For some sites, I now do not know what they look like as my only exposure to them is through their RSS feed. More important because I find that...read full entry...

An information society?September 21, 2005Some media experiences in the last day or two: A TV ad: a driver is rung up and asked if he would like to schedule an oil change for his BMW. How did they know it was due? Why the car had communicated it to them directly. Another TV ad:...read full entry...

L'ogre anglophoneSeptember 21, 2005From BiblioAcid on the finding in our Aggregate collections article that about 50% of unique titles in the aggregate Google 5 collections were in non-English languages.Bref, l'�crasement de la francophonie par l'ogre anglophone Google semble largement fantasm�. [BiblioAcid]Of course, our figures refer to the collections themselves, not to the choices...read full entry...

Digital preservationSeptember 20, 2005Presentations describing projects shortlisted for the Digital Preservation Award for 2005 have been made available.The Digital Preservation Award of �5,000 is sponsored by the Digital Preservation Coalition. This prestigious Award recognises the many new initiatives being undertaken in the challenging field of digital preservation. The Digital Preservation Award is presented...read full entry...

Business week web - socializing, sharing -- and creatingSeptember 19, 2005Noted in several places, Business Week talks about what the web has become:The Web is no longer for idle wanderings or passive viewing. It's about socializing, sharing--and creating [BusinessWeek Magazine: Best of the Web Special Report and Survey Results]There are articles on various aspects of changing web experiences and technologies....read full entry...

Hwaet! Such swift search, SRU on a clusterSeptember 19, 2005My colleagues write about parallel text searching on a Beowulf Cluster in the current DLib Magazine:This article describes our experience building a scalable, relatively inexpensive, and fast searching framework that demonstrated 172 searches per second on a database of 50 million records. The article should be of interest to anyone...read full entry...

StoneDSeptember 17, 2005An article in the current D-Lib Magazine describes StoneD, a bridge for moving content between DSpace and Greenstone instances. They must have decided against the attractive alternative - GreenSpace?...read full entry...

The anatomy of an aggregate collectionSeptember 17, 2005Over the coming years we will take a more active role in managing aggregate or collective collections: thinking about the best disposition of collections within particular inter-institutional policy environments. The opportunity costs of managing print collections will ensure that this happens. My colleague and I state this as follows in...read full entry...

Browser integration of searchSeptember 17, 2005Interesting post on the Amazon Web Services Blog:Microsoft's IE blog is reporting on the behind the scenes efforts which lead up to the recent announcement that IE7 will support A9.com's OpenSearch interface. You can read even more about this on the A9 blog. [Amazon Web Services Blog: Behind the Scenes...read full entry...

Picture thisSeptember 17, 2005I managed to spend an hour or two in the Prado last weekend (and in the very relaxing Botanical Gardens opposite afterwards). I was in Madrid at meetings held in parallel with the DC-2005 conference which continues to discuss metadata issues ten years on. I was amazed to see how...read full entry...

Easing upSeptember 16, 2005A brief work trip to Spain followed by an emergency appendectomy (spelling?) have slowed things down here for a while. More later .......read full entry...

IR frameworksSeptember 13, 2005Institutional repositories for the research sector: feasibility study [pdf] is a report prepared for the National Library of New Zealand. I was interested to see the role of the National Library moving this forward. From the initiative's Wiki:A repository framework for New Zealand The National Library of New Zealand, in...read full entry...

NARA selects providerSeptember 08, 2005The ability to manage records through time is critical to the NARA mission. It has no choice but to manage electronic records. It has just announced a $307M contract with Lockheed-Martin to provide the Electronic Records Archive.In making the announcement, Professor Weinstein said, "I am indebted to those who acted...read full entry...

OpenURL Resolver RegistrySeptember 08, 2005This is a pointer to a new Alpha service from OCLC, the OpenURL Resolver Registry. This is a nice idea which potentially extends the utility of the OpenURL by providing a switch between a user/user application and an appropriate resolver. OCLC is utilizing a phased approach in this project. The...read full entry...

Project ArrowSeptember 07, 2005I have mentioned Arrow a couple of times: Arrow is an Australian project looking at national Institutional Repository infrastructure. Geoff Payne, the Arrow project manager was in OCLC recently discussing how they might integrate some of our schema transformation work. He gave a well received presentatation to OCLC staff and...read full entry...

Service architectureSeptember 06, 2005A DLF Working Group, of which I am a member, has been working on approaches to service frameworks or architectures. A progress report is available, and DLF is looking to engage some dedicated effort to advance the work to its next stage. A Service Framework is a tool with which...read full entry...

New model library system vendorsSeptember 05, 2005The formation of SirsiDynix prompted a couple of interesting posts. Kenton Good predicted that there would be another coming together this year and wondered would it be Innovative Interfaces and Endeavor Information Systems. He speculated that:Ex Libris feeling isolated will radically shift their business model. Leveraging their plans to modularize...read full entry...

Amazoogle in the catalog(ue)September 02, 2005The Olympics are coming to London in 2012. I was looking at some of the Olympics material, and spent some time looking at the University of East London site. UeL will be a venue for some events. I notice that the catalog gives you the option to select Amazon and...read full entry...

Simpler licensesSeptember 02, 2005I mentioned a while ago that Thom is looking into our OCLC Research Public License to see how we can do what we want to do in as simple a way as possible. We feel that there is too much case by case discussion. In that context I was interested...read full entry...

BBC AmericaSeptember 01, 2005The remaking of Doctor Who by the BBC a while ago was a nostalgic moment for many. Certainly for me, who had grown up with it, it was. Although I have not yet seen an episode of the new version. The BBC -- radio and TV -- has been a...read full entry...